Forgotten Victims in Terror Bombing of Germany – a Collective Silence

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress of USAAF on a bombing raid west of Berlin 1945

Postwar Nürnberg – The medieval city centre 1945

Postwar Köln – Der Kölner Dom 1945

The allied bombing of Germany by the British RAF and U.S. Army Air Force - in particular that of Bomber Command - brought massive death and destruction to Germans, destroyed priceless artifacts built and preserved for centuries, yet made little contribution to actually winning the war. For five years during World War II, the Allies launched a trial and error bombing campaign against Germany's historical city landscape. Peaking in the war's final three months, it was the first air attack of its kind. Civilian dwellings were struck by in today's terms weapons of mass destruction, with a total of 600,000 civilian deaths, including 70,000 children. The bombing of the larger city of Hamburg in 1943 created one of the greatest firestorms raised by RAF and USAAF killing roughly 50,000 civilians and practically destroying the entire city. The most controversial raid took place in the late evening on February 13 1945. The bombing of Dresden resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed several tens of thousands of civilians. 722 heavy bombers of the British RAF and 527 of the USAAF dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city. In February 1945, the Commanding-in Chief of RAF Bomber Command Arthur Travers Harris (Bomber Harris) wrote: I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. Raids such as that on Dresden and Pforzheim when Germany had already lost the war have been criticised and is recognized as one of the many examples of high civilian casualties caused by Allied strategic bombing. The destruction it caused in Continental Europe had little military value. The culmination of Bomber Command's offensive occurred in March 1945 when the RAF dropped the highest monthly weight of ordnance in the entire war. Despite protests from Germany as well as some in Britain, the Bomber Harris Trust erected a statue of him outside the RAF Church of St. Clement Danes in London in 1992. Credit: the historian Jörg Friedrich. Top image: almost 1,000 B-17 bombers of the U.S. 8th Air Force, protected by some 575 P-51 Mustangs, attacked Berlin on the forenoon of February 3 1945. The order told American bombardiers to use the Friedrichstraße Railway Station in Berlin as the aiming point. Lt-General James Doolittle, commander of the 8th Air Force, objected to it as an attack on morale, but he was overruled by the USAAF commander, General Carl Spaatz, who was supported by the Allied commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Photo by U.S. Air Force photographer sergeant Lew Funk (1-14-45). Credit: Nathan Howland. Private Collection. PD. Middle image: Nürnberg was heavily bombed from 1943 to 1945 by allied forces. The first RAF raid of greater Nuremberg took place on August 7 1940. The greatest damages occurred on January 2 1945 in which 521 RAF bombers dropped 6,000 high-explosive bombs and one million incendiary devices on the city. Credit: Rue des Archives. FU. Bottom image: Köln was bombed in over 200 separate air raids. The ancient Cathedral of Cologne suffered fourteen hits by aerial bombs during the war and was seriously damaged. It did not collapse, but stood tall in an otherwise flattened city. Thankfully, the medieval windows and many of the important items in the cathedral had been removed in time. Construction of the Cathedral began in 1248 and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. FU. Ext. links: Berlin in color 1936, Berlin in color May 1945 and Berlin in color July 1945.